Statement by Chinese Rights Campaigner Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison

By The New York Times

Nov. 27, 2015

Yang Maodong, a Chinese human rights campaigner better known by his pen name, Guo Feixiong, was sentenced on Friday to six years in prison on charges of “assembling a crowd to disrupt public order” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Prosecutors had cited his role in organizing support for journalists protesting censorship at the Guangzhou newspaper Southern Weekend and for rallies calling for China to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In anticipation of his sentencing, he wrote the following statement, which was released by his wife, Zhang Qing, and translated from the Chinese by Vanessa Piao:

Statement at Sentencing

This verdict violates justice and the law. This is heinous political persecution of me and Sun Desheng by China’s dark antidemocratic forces. We are completely innocent.

Hidden deep inside the law is the voice of essence and dignity. “You ... have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.” Your verdict, however, tramples on justice, violates humanity and wrecks rudimentary procedural justice.

You have concocted an unjust political case against us, who were uprightly exercising our civic and political rights. You have used judicial institutions that should have been applied to uphold justice and safeguard human rights to frame innocent citizens, crush human rights and trample on the core interest of the Chinese nation — the cause of constitutional democracy.

Your conduct has a very clear criminal intent, and the circumstances are particularly serious. This is evil beyond evil. Your actions have gravely violated criminal law. In a future of democracy and rule of law, the courts will judge your crimes in a just way and shine a humane light on your character, which for so long has been permeated with brutishness, greed, fear and hatred.

Without justice and atonement, there cannot be the dignity of mercy and forgiveness. To all tyrants on Chinese soil, all oppressors and all evil foes of democracy, this is the outraged prediction from an unyielding idealist who has been framed politically and endured the torments of torture: You, whose minds have been poisoned by totalitarian ideology and who to this day refuse to mend your ways, will be punished.

You have endured the calamitous historic tragedies wrought by totalitarianism, but you still cling to its mantle as you push backwards against progress, sparing no means to protect power held for private ends and an all-encompassing dictatorship.

I believe that in ages to come humankind will unhurriedly condemn your utter foolishness and corrupted conscience. They will condemn the shameless self-righteousness of your political brutishness.

“History is our religion.” History is our nation’s court of natural law. The judges in this trial, Zheng Xin, Luo Cheng and Lu Xiao, prosecutors Wang Yu and Liu Lijun, and the claque of officials hiding behind you charged with maintaining stability, who regard modern democracy as a bottomless abyss: You are secretly acting against your conscience, but in the eyes of the gods it’s as obvious as a lightning bolt. You will never be able to escape punishment for your grave sins in the court of history.

I will tell you the truth: It is impossible for your shameful political persecution to achieve the political goal of oppressing China’s mighty tide of democracy. On the contrary, it will only help the people of the world to recognize your antidemocratic nature. It will only make more citizens stand up bravely either out of anger or enlightenment, rising like mountains and joining our ranks.

Our movement of freedom and democracy will grow increasingly stronger amid the relentless crackdowns and pressure, until one day this generation of citizens will use its own hands to build a palace of constitutional democracy with diversity and a balance of power on this land that has seen so much disaster.

The future belongs to the citizens as sovereign and the people as sovereign; no nation in the world can escape it.

Here, I would like express my sincere gratitude to Chen Guangwu, Zhang Xuezhong, Zhang Lei and Li Jinxing, the lawyers who have bravely defended me against all the odds in the past two years, despite all kinds of risks and obstruction. No words can express the great help these four lawyers provided to me.

I would also like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the lawyers Sui Muqing and Lin Qilei, who have painstakingly and selflessly committed themselves to rescuing and supporting me, and to Xiao Shu, Guo Chunping and Zhao Hongwei, the Rev. Bob Fu and teacher Zhang Min, to my elder sister Yang Maoping, who has been emotionally tormented but has become even stronger, to my elder brother Yang Maoquan, the many comrades-in-arms in the rights movement and the liberal groups who have in one way or another appealed [for my release], provided help and supported me with their presence but whose names I cannot all list here, and the honest and kind compatriots and foreign friends who have used all kinds of ways to spread information, express their support and speak up in protest.

The support and help of the brothers and sisters in the world have made me feel as if I were living in a warm ocean of humanity and charity, and made me forget the chilling cold of the prison bars and the distress felt when trapped behind thick walls.

I would also especially like to express my deep gratitude to my wife, Zhang Qing. In late July 2012, at a gathering of civil rights movement veterans in Beijing, I was asked about my family. At that time, I said: “My feelings for my wife are sacrosanct, because she tried her best to appeal for me and rescue me when I was in peril, and refused to give in despite various threats.”

Dear wife, today I have openly voiced my deep gratitude for you. This is to express and profess my profound respect for your character defined by resistance, persistence and loyalty in the past 10 years. Especially all you did for me from September 2006 to December 2008, that I will never forget and will be forever grateful. “The eternal feminine draws us upwards.”

Dear wife, I deeply understand your difficulties and toil in raising our son and daughter as a mother in a strange land. I keep ending up in prison for democracy in our Chinese motherland. The education of our daughter and son — the family affair I have attached the greatest importance to — has all been on your shoulders!

Friends, I should stop here. I am welcoming a new start. Unlimited wondrous stories and opportunities and the brilliance and glory of ideals are ahead of us and await us.

Yang Maodong (Guo Feixiong)

On the Day of the Verdict

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